Curiouser and Curiouser!

Roger Costello and David Jacobs have published a quick introduction to the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL) which is a semantic layer that sits above the Resource Description Framework (RDF).

[Posted on xml-dev]

I doubt this introduction will make converts of anyone, OWL just isn't that easy to grok, but the applications it presents are credible ones.  I think the problem for skeptics is that they (a) have seen it all before, and, (b) are suspicious of things that they can't directly grapple with, and, OWL & RDF are not for the fainthearted.

The fact that RDF is not widely considered to be a success is not surprising to me.  It looks complicated and it's not immediately obvious what you do with it - it's just metadata after all.  I believe that OWL or, more precisely, useful OWL ontologies, are what will make RDF successful.  It's OWL that tells applications what they can (and cannot) do with RDF metadata. That's it's power.

Two key things need to happen now:

• The creation of applications that help developers to create robust and useful ontologies.
• The creation of libraries for embedding RDF+OWL into applications (as ubiqitous as XML parser libraries are today).

If these two pieces of the puzzle can be assembled then I think we will see a raft of components built that utilize ontologies to perform their functions.  These components will be made into JavaBeans, .NET assemblies, published as web services, whatever.  Users will consume those services and never need to know that OWL or RDF are involved.

However until those tools arrive I believe the only course left to you (unless you're trying to build them yourself) is to be pragmatic and keep a weather eye open.  As Dave Winer commented recently about RDF: "I am not against it, as long as it doesn't interfere with what I want to do."

Giants go 7-0!  Woo Hoo

Franchise history is being made, now if we can just make it to 10-0!

Results Oriented KM. Some recent thoughts on KM:

• KM is not an end in itself. It is a set of disciplines and tools to help us meet our business objectives.

  What is the point of doing KM if it does not help us meet our business objectives? KM can only be measured by its ability to help us meet our business objectives.

• KM needs to address the quality of our decision-making.

  What is the point of KM if we still make lousy decisions - if we do the wrong thing - even exceptionally well? We would do better to do the right thing badly and not bother with KM at all!

• KM needs to address the issue of our motivation and our ability to make use of the knowledge we have.

  We can be given all the perfect information and knowledge that we need to do our jobs but if we fail to use it then what is the point?

• KM should help us to improve our awareness and understanding.

  KM should not be just about helping us to know more. It is through increased awareness and understanding that we start to see our organizational world in new ways and identify new business opportunities.

• KM is about helping us to identify new opportunities and leveraging them.

  Measuring the results of KM is important but we should not forget that KM is also about identifying new opportunities. We can measure cost/profit etc but we cannot measure 'missed opportunities" by their very nature we do not see missed opportunities until it is too late. [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]

Some insightful thoughts from David.